


Good Girls Don't Look

by Bright_Elen



Category: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Mentor/Protégé, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 05:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4336325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Girl only drinks men for a reason, but then she finds one who defies her expectations. It doesn't go well, but it could be worse, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Girls Don't Look

When the girl first comes to Istanbul, her Sight catches on a middle-aged woman buying vegetables in a market. The woman’s hair is uncovered. The girl stands with her back to a wall and watches the woman walking through the streets with her daughter, up narrow stairs, into a building. Doors close. The woman goes to the kitchen and places the vegetables on the table. The daughter sets water to boil. The girl watches them talk, smile, sigh, argue gently over the seasonings.

The girl blinks. She is still next to the cafe. A young boy looks at her with curiosity and concern. She tries to stay in her own head, but the boy takes her down a wide boulevard and into a mosque. He prays with his whole body, and the girl watches the fine carpet beneath him, the carved screen separating the boy and his sister, the imam leading the service.

The imam looks directly at the boy, and the girl is shuddering against the cafe wall and running into the nearest alley.

She closes her eyes, breathing hard. The night is still cool, but she knows she must return to shelter soon. A stray dog comes to investigate her, and when she waves it away she goes with it, and watches the city from knee height.

She doesn’t know how long she stands in the alley, trapped in the dog’s world, but she comes back to herself when big hands grab her arms. The space around her snaps back, and she smiles at the man fumbling with her clothes.

After she has drunk, she feels better. She sees only through her own eyes on the walk home.

* * *

A pale Western woman stands before the Hagia Sofia, angular face aglow with wonder. She points to the dome and says something to the thin man holding her arm. He smiles and replies, but doesn’t take his eyes off the woman’s face. He is dressed in threadbare clothes, hair a tangled ruin, but both only emphasize the transcendent joy and adoration in his face. His expression freezes the girl where she stands, even through the eyes of a beggar. It is something she knows she has never seen before.

She releases the drifter, walks to the square, finds the couple moving down a side street. The girl follows.

Both man and woman are dressed in foreign clothes, oddly cut yet of rich fabrics - he in dark blues with a splash of white at his throat, she in dusty gold and ivory and turquoise. The girl learns, over the course of an hour, that they walk unhurriedly yet with purpose, that they stop to look at lovely things and people, that they have easy silence and intimate conversation.

The man turns his head as though he hears something. The girl is worried that she has been noticed, but he takes the woman’s hand and leads her away. It takes a few blocks before the girl realizes he is chasing a song, one sung high and sweet, and none of them stop until they reach the lonely street beneath an open window.

The girl creeps closer. The man and woman are leaning back against the wall side by side. He is listening with head tilted back, eyes closed, undisguised rapture on his face. The woman watches him for a while in a mirror of their postures at the Hagia Sofia, and then her gaze moves up and out, perhaps at the stars.

A strange fullness is in the girl’s chest. She does not know what to do about it.

Maybe she makes a noise. Maybe she moves too much. The pale woman looks at the girl, frowning minutely.

Panicking at the thought of never seeing them again, the girl roughly shoves her Sight into the woman’s eyes, turns, and runs. She watches herself retreating down the street.

* * *

The couple stay in Istanbul. Over the next several nights, the girl thinks of them, has flashes of Sight, but cannot hold the visions longer than a few seconds at a time. It was too sloppily done, she thinks. She’d never tried to See through someone when she was that upset.

For the first time she can remember, she regrets. The brief images she does See are almost worse than nothing at all: the pages of a book in a language she doesn’t know; the woman’s bare hand holding the man’s; the man bent over a stringed instrument, beautiful in his concentration.

If only she had followed at a larger distance. If only she had captured a cat and used it to watch safely. If only she had been able to keep calm and Look at the woman properly. She finds herself hoping to meet him, or to somehow See better.

The girl loses her appetite and doesn’t drink for three nights. On the fourth night her body rebels and she finds herself attacking the first male she finds alone. He was only a boy, and she regrets this, too, and knows she must be more careful. She begins to hope to See the man behaving like one, so that she can be free of him.

On the sixth night, she is standing under a tree at the edge of the Sultan Ahmet Park. She is watching a girl combing her mother’s hair in their home above the market.

“Hello,” someone says sweetly in Arabic. “We’d like to talk to you.”

The girl breaks her vision, looks up, freezes. The woman is standing beside her. The man is on her other side.

“My name is Eve,” the woman continues, as if the girl is not quietly dissolving into fear. “My husband is Adam.”

Husband. The word and the man do not make sense together. It is enough for the girl to stare at him, confused.

Any protests or questions die on her lips. Adam is angry. No, he is furious.

“Why were you following us?” he demands, stepping in very close to the girl. He looms above her, oddly still, as if he moves only as much as he chooses.

“I...” the girl says, shrinking back against the tree. Her eyes dart back and forth between Eve and Adam, and for the first time she can remember, her eyes begin to sting.

“You are so beautiful together,” the girl whispers. She blinks. No water rolls down her face.

Adam cocks his head. Frowns. Closes his eyes. Then opens them and takes a step back. He murmurs something to Eve in a language the girl doesn’t understand.

Surprised, Eve looks at the girl. Then she removes one soft glove. Blunt fingers skim feather-light over the girl’s face, arms, hands. Eve nods.

“You’re right, darling. She’s young - barely older than she looks - but still too old. And her veins are still. I imagine that boy the other night was hers.”

The girl starts, starting to push back and around the tree, trying to escape. The last person to learn her secret tried to cut her into pieces. She does not want any of them to end up a bloody mess in an alley, or worse. She has barely begun the first terrified step before Adam’s gloved hand is wrapped around her arm like a vise. She didn’t see him move.

“We aren’t finished yet. What did you do to my wife?”

“Shh, Adam. She’s a child,” Eve says. Then, to the girl, gently, “Don’t be afraid. We only want to know what you did.”

The girl doesn’t understand everything - could these strange people be like her? Certainly she’s never heard of someone being able to discern age through touch - but she believes Eve.

“I...put my Sight in your eyes.”

Eve frowns, pensive.

Adam just narrows his eyes. “Reverse it.”

The girl considers Eve for a long moment. She too is beautiful, unearthly in her patience and calm the way Adam is not. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Try,” they both say, Adam sharply, Eve more gentle but demanding no less.

The girl closes her eyes. She thinks of the foreigners, finds the point of light that belongs to Eve, and imagines holding it close in her hands. If she tries to disconnect, it might work. She will never see them again.

If she doesn’t try, she will always know she has wronged Eve. 

Slowly, she lets her fingers open around their connection. Distantly she can see herself concentrating. Adam looks at Eve with concern, his fierceness in complete service to his love, and the girl closes her hands again.

Briefly. Then she opens them again, determined.

Imagining the light as a bird, she throws her hands into the air, willing it to go free. It wobbles upwards, slow and reluctant, but she keeps pushing. Long minutes drag past, maybe hours; but eventually, finally, the light disappears.

The girl slumps against the tree, head bowed. She waits for a moment, then tries to recall the connection. She can’t find it.

“Thank you,” Eve says, wrapping long arms around the girl’s shoulders. She smells of blood and strange herbs and paper. The girl wants to open her eyes to look at Adam one last time, but doesn’t dare.

“Don’t leave messes,” his voice advises, reluctantly. “At least don’t leave them in your own neighborhood.”

Eve tightens the embrace. “You may find a lover, or you may not,” she murmurs. “The important thing is to appreciate what you do find.” She stands, squeezes the girl’s shoulder, then chuckles. “Keep your eyes open.”

 


End file.
